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Same State, Different District - Will I make mistakes?

Submitted by an LD OnLine user on

We have relocated from northern to southern California. My son, 12 y.o., just started 7th grade. He was assessed last May, 2004 up north. We had his IEP done and though I had no idea what I was doing, his school did a good job. He tested very high on all the tests given to him, so high the district psychologist indicated her belief that he is gifted with a specific learning disability. That being a visual processing deficit (spatial, closure). I hope that makes sense to someone, because I am sure struggling to figure it out.

I understand this is not a vision problem, he has 20/15 vision. He can read 300+ page books etc. He has horrible handwriting, is terribly unorganized and has no friends. He is a great kid. He is not a behavior problem or mean or a bully, but he tends to loom - be in other peoples space a little bit. He was getting pretty much all F’s on his report cards because he refused to do his homework/classwork. We tried everything to try to get him to do his work. I do mean EVERYTHING.

Once the IEP was done the results were that he was going to be in the regular classroom w/ 1 class at the end of the day for english/writing help and for help with his homework/organization stuff. We had the additional resource and assistive tech stuff all figured out.

We relocated right before school here started, mid August. Prior to the first school day (8/25/04) I provided the new school with copies of all the assessments/evaluations/results/IEP. The new school told me they had 30 days before meeting with me to develop his new IEP (which if okay) and they were temporarily putting him in special English and regular everything else.

I was contacted during the second week of September to meet for the IEP with the new school. They wanted to meet that week. I asked for a copy of my sons entire school file. I needed just a day or two to go over the contents prior to our meeting, however, I was told, they did have his file yet. I asked, why they would want to meet without having that information first. They insisted they would be just fine without it.

I decided I could probably get alot more for my son if they did not have anything to go on. WHen I showed up at the meeting, the sp. ed. teacher said they decided to go ahead and wait….hmmmm.

THIS IS WHERE I START FLOUNDERING.

He told me, that even though the prior districts psychologist wrote certain things in her report, they do things differently in this district. For example, on the WISC III, my son had a total verbal scale of 130 and a total performance scale of 110. The prior psych didn’t give him a combined full scale because it wouldn’t show the strength and the, not weakness, but the ‘non-strength’.. He said , ‘Well, we only do full scale.’

He also, said he was going to pull him out of the special English class, because he was too smart to be in there - he is the teacher.

I am at a loss. I meet with them again during the week of October 4-8,04.

Any suggestions at all would be great.

Thanks,

Kristin

Submitted by victoria on Thu, 09/23/2004 - 6:18 AM

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First, I do not mean this in a sarcastic way at all so please don’t take me wrong, please take it as a positive suggestion: when people say they have tried “everything” I often find they have tried everything *except* the most basic and simple things, the basic and simple things that are the most necessary. Trouble is they are so basic and simple that they tend to get written off too soon.
In your son’s case, he is bright and likes learning, but fiercely resists doing written work, so …
OK, two things that are so darned simple they often get overlooked —
first, how about simply reducing the written work to the bare bones minimum that simply must be done? If he is bright and capable, he doesn’t need to be filling in repetitive drill sheets over and over! He could be spending that time more productively reading or solving problems. You can formally request a reduction in written drill on the IEP, although as you have already discovered this is a long and cumbersome process. Or, you and he can talk to the teachers, explain his difficulty with paperwork, and see what can be done in an informal way. Sometimes things just have to be done, but other times you can do some informal accommodation. Even if the teachers don’t help, some of the homework can just be left undone — look at the marking policy and set priorities. (For example, does he really need to write already-known spelling words three times? Yes he *should* do the complicated story problems, but does he really need to write out fifty warm-up math exercises first — would ten, one of each type, do as well? And so on.) When he sees a manageable amount and not ever-increasing stacks, he may be more cooperative.
Second, and I am NOT being sarcastic or flippant here, how about teaching him how to write? I am meeting and hearing more and more every year kids who simply were not taught, just handed a crayon and expected to pick it up on their own. I work all the time (ie tonight) with kids who form their letters upside down and backwards and three different ways on the same page. Well, if you can’t form a single letter consistently in order, how in heck are you going to spell a whole word or organize a grammatical sentence consistently in order? Here is your boy with Grade 10 ideas in his head but when he tried to put them on paper they look like a Grade 2 kid — he is frustrated and probably ashamed of himself. No wonder he is resistant.
It takes those three dirty little four letter words, hard work and time, but you can re-teach handwriting. And spelling. (my student tonight is Grade 8 but we are making progress). Once he is writing in some kind of order and pattern and rhythm on the letter scale, then the spelling and sentence structure often improve as if by magic — it isn’t magic, it’s a foundation to build on that does the trick. I am happy to send out my handwriting notes on request to [email protected] and others on this board will also have suggestions.
Some people will suggest keyboarding as the great solution to everything, but my experience is that competent (not perfect) handwriting is practically useful, and also a tool to teach tracking and organization at the same time.

I speak as a person who has organizational difficulties myself, as I stare at six boxes of papers I’ve been trying to get sorted for months. You can’t always cure organizational problems, but you can reduce them and manage them. Keep It Simple is the first and most important rule. Avoid systems with multiple binders and tabs and multicolour codes and writing things down in three places — if he could handle that, he wouldn’t have the problem in the first place. I like the everything-in-one-backpack system myself — it worked for me and my daughter and we are pretty hard cases with combined visual and coordination problems.

At first, the parent or mentor has to take on a lot of the organization load, for example emptying that backpack and sorting. Many people, often complete strangers, will jump in and yell at you because he is supposed to be learning to be independent. Let them yell. Fine, he has to learn, but throwing him into the deep end to drown is not productive. The idea is to support him **at first** and then gradually reduce the support until he is *succeeding* independently.

I would agree with your teacher about the basic English class. This is probably a bad place for a bright good reader with organization problems; this class usually has a high number of very weak readers with a poor attitude to school and learning, and the work tends to be those repetitive drill sheets. There is little positive for your son to learn in such a class. If the teacher thinks your son is too high a level for this class, the teacher is probably right. Higher level classes usually have more open-ended assignments over longer times, and this is often easier for bright kids with writing difficulties than daily drill.

Good luck and keep working on it. Junior high does come to an end.

Submitted by victoria on Thu, 09/23/2004 - 7:12 AM

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PS — missed two things in your long post in my long reply.

Your title — Of course you will make mistakes!! So do we all. Nobody’s a saint around here yet. Do your best and try, try again.

Is it or isn’t it a vision problem? Yes. There are different *kinds* of vision problems. There are problems with the basic structure and light refraction of the eye, and these are the classic kind measured by such things as 20/15 (if we both got that right, he’s farsighted; most of my family are farsighted as children too; it’s uncommon but don’t let anyone tell you it doesn’t happen, it does.) Anyway, a standard optometric test and glasses if needed cover most of these.
The there are *other* kinds of vision problems. (1) problems with focus and tracking caused by problems with the multiple little muscles that control the eye — vision therapy works on these; the results of VT are mixed but from what I read it is worth it with a good provider. (2) Problems with transmission through the nerves to the brain, and with analyzing and interpreting the messages in the brain — putting visual impressions together into a meaningful big picture. Vision therapy and *effective* forms of reading and writing instruction work on these. Multisensory teaching, where sound-sight-physical motion-touch are all tied together, is helpful in better organizing visual data by giving feedback. Not a quick process but helpful.

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